INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 155 



Small as this insect is, we must ackno'.vledge the 

 elephant, rhinoceros, lion and tiger vastly his inferior. 

 The appearance, nay the very sound of it occasions 

 more trepidation, movements and disorder both in the 

 human and brute creation, than whole herds of the 

 most ferocious wild beasts in tenfold greater numberf5 

 than they ever are would produce. As soon as this 

 plague appears, and their buzzing- is heard, all tlie cat- 

 tle forsake their food, and run wildly about the plain 

 till they die worn out with fatigue, -fright, and hunger. 

 No remedy remains for the residents on such spots but 

 to leave the black earth and hasten down to the sands 

 of Atbara, and there they remain while the rains last. 

 Camels, and even elephants and rhinoceroses, though 

 the two last coat themselves with an armour of mud, 

 are attacked by this winged assassin and afflicted with 

 numerous tumours. All the inhabitants of the sea-coast 

 of Melinda down to Cape Gardefan, to Saba and the 

 south of the Red Sea, are obliged in the beginning of 

 the rainy season to remove to the next sand to prevent 

 all their stock of cattle from being- destroyed. This is 

 no partial emigration —the inhabitants of all the coun- 

 tries from the mountains of Abyssinia northward, to the 

 confluence of the Nile and Astaboras, are once a year 



water, to which our cattle generally fly as a refuge froin it. It seems 

 more probable that the CEstrus of Greece was related to Bruce's Zimb, 

 represented in his figure with a long proboscis, which irak;s its appear- 

 ance in the neighbourhood of rivers, and belongs, perbap;-, to Latreille's 

 genus Pangonia, as observed above, {Tanyglossa, Meig.) or to his Nemes- 

 trina. Olivier, indeed, speaks of the former genus as frequenting flowers 

 like the Bombylii ; but this the male Tabani do, while the females are 

 furious blood-suckers. See Latr. Hist, Nat. xiv. 318; and Gen. Crust. &" 

 Ins. iv. 281,307. 



